Political Quotes

“When it was first opened in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Guantanamo Bay prison may have seemed a reasonable stopgap measure as a shocked Nation marshaled its resources and figured out how to dispose of detainees taken in Afghanistan and elsewhere. But even in those early days, the problems we were creating with Guantanamo's patchwork of military rules and commissions were readily apparent. Since 2002, I have introduced numerous bills and amendments to try to bring Guantanamo into conformity with American and international law and to stop it from becoming a jihadi recruiting tool. But reform of this prison system has been elusive and progress towards bringing its detainees to justice almost nonexistent, as U.S. courts have taken strong issue with its improvised legal process. In one of his first acts as President, Barack Obama ordered the closing of Guantanamo, but the Congress almost immediately stepped in and erected a series of statutory barriers that have prevented the transfer of detainees to the United States and made transfer to third countries extremely difficult. Today, there is a renewed push by the administration to shutter Guantanamo for good. Doing so will not be easy, but the cost of keeping the prison open--to our values, to our pocketbook, to our reputation, and to our security--have become too great to bear.…”